Top 36 Hiroshi Sugimoto Quotes
#1. Where do you draw the line as a human being? Written record is only, what, a couple thousand years? And this scientific revolution is less than a hundred years. And computers only a few decades! We've changed so much. It's amazing, the speed of changes.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#2. Waterlilies always come in Buddhist sculpture. The Buddhas all stand on lotus pedestals, because the lotus is grown from the mud. The mud represents the stained world, a dirty world, but growing from the dirt is such a beautiful, pure thing. This is the way the spirit should be.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#3. However fake the subject, once photographed, it's as good as real.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#4. I don't know how many serious Christians exist here in America, but the Japanese, the younger generation is leaving the Buddhist religion mentality behind.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#5. I'm thinking about the end of civilization. We may not keep growing like we are now. There must be an end of civilization. That's what I did as a show at the Palais de Tokyo, the 33 scenarios of how this civilization ends.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#6. To me, as a visual artist, I don't want to get into the theory of Buddhism. There are many Buddhism theories and they fight each other, like Christians as well.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#7. I don't love the postmodern statement: "You shouldn't be spiritual if you are the artist."
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#9. When I saw this Broken Kilometer, it reminded me of these 1,000 Buddhas. That piece is 1,000 one-meter gold rods, and this is 1,000 pieces of gold gilded wooden sculpture. In terms of design, it's up to the space's character.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#10. Art is technique: a means by which to materialize the invisible realm of the mind.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#11. I feel that I'm in a very interesting position, where I'm standing back to look at this change, at this moment in history of human beings. If the end of the civilization comes before the end of my life, that's lucky! I want to witness how this big story of humans ends.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#12. Many people [still] believe that at the time of your death, 1,000 Buddhas show up and welcome you into the paradise state.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#13. [I'm concerned with] aesthetics and this idea of how the passage between life and death goes. I can visually present that by borrowing this Buddhist statue.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#14. I'm inviting the spirits into my photography. It's an act of God.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#15. All over the planet, nature is being transformed into 'un-nature' at breakneck speed ... My life is part of natural history. I long to know where that history came from and where it is going.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#16. Art and religion have the same origin. Art first, or religion first? Maybe consciousness first! Consciousness always comes with religious feeling and artistic identification. It's the same origin.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#17. Not any particular religion or school of religion, but being an artist, you have to be spiritual, in a way.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#18. Fossils work almost the same way as photography as a record of history. The accumulation of time and history becomes a negative of the image. And this negative comes off, and the fossil is the positive side. This is the same as the action of photography.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#19. When I wake up I just make it happen. My dreams come true- that is the artistic practice.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#21. Life is one passage and then you keep moving into another state.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#22. Art always helps religion; it became an inseparable phenomenon when human beings gained consciousness.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#23. I try to never be satisfied; this way I will always be challenging my spirit.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#24. My concept was, within the five-minute video, for people to see one million Buddhas. So I made a group of the images and it keeps accelerating to reach this one million point. The movie was invented from the still photos.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#25. People have been reading photography as a true document, at the same time they are now getting suspicious. I am basically an honest person, so I let the camera capture whatever it captures whether you believe it or not is up to you; it's not my responsibility, blame my camera, not me.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#26. I came to California in 1970 and so many people were asking if I was a Buddhist or knew Zen theory, asking if I was enlightened already or not. So I said, "Yes, I am enlightened," and then I studied quickly to catch up.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#27. The Buddhist concept is that it takes 48 days to get near this state [of death]. So it's a slow process, moving into, not a permanent death, but the world of the dead.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#28. [Takashi] Murakami, do you think he is spiritual? He is more like de-spiritualized. De-spiritualized might be the most contemporary aspect of the human mind.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#29. The 1,000 Buddha, to me, is almost like a contemporary art piece.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#30. Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#31. I have a strong feeling about this quick movement and changing of society and populations growing - something scary.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#33. Photography is like a found object. A photographer never makes an actual subject; they just steal the image from the world ... Photography is a system of saving memories. It's a time machine, in a way, to preserve the memory, to preserve time.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#34. I don't know whether the future or 2018 exists or not, but if it exists, I'm offering a show to a museum in Australia titled "Time Reversed." Time is going backwards.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#35. If I already have a vision, my work is almost done. The rest is a technical problem.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
#36. When people call me a photographer, I always feel like something of a charlatan - at least in Japanese. The word shashin, for photograph, combines the characters sha, meaning to reflect or copy, and shin, meaning truth, hence the photographer seems to entertain grand delusions of portraying truth.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
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